El Sol Latino | March 2016 | 12.5

March 2016

Volume 12 No. 5

Un Periódico Diferente / A Different Kind of Newspaper

Un Periódico Diferente / A Different Kind of Newspaper

Un Periódico Diferente / A Different Kind of Newspaper

Un Periódico Diferente / A Different Kind of Newspaper

Andrés Feliciano, Interview with

Co-Producer and Music Director of Paper City Credits - Film clips from “Paper City”

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Editorial/Editorial

Building a Hispanic Agenda in Holyoke On February 24 the first meeting of the Hoyoke Latinx Leadership was held at Enlace de Familias. The program, organized by the new city councilor from Ward 1, Nelson Román, looked to unite the Latino community of Holyoke to establish a common agenda. The event was attended by a group of small business owners, educators, community organizers and Latino politicians, and others who were invited to participate.

Nelson Román spoke about the history of how the Latinx Leadership Group was born and its purpose.

He also talked about the current status of the Latino community of Holyoke and his long-term vision for creating a Holyoke Latinx Agenda. Although time was limited, some of the attendees had the opportunity to express their opinions, reactions and good ideas.

As I listened to the participants, the words of Dr. Frank Bonilla (one of the founders of the Center for Puerto Ricans Studies - CENTRO) at a commemorative symposium entitled King’s Legacy: Our Unfinished Agenda on January 26, 1991 at the University of Michigan, came to mind. In his presentation, Dr. Bonilla stated that, “In recent years the formulation agendas for Latino peoples has become almost a ritual at every political level and on every conceivable theme. Wherever two Latino heads come together, it seems an agenda is in the making.”

Don’t get me wrong. I do believe developing a Latino agenda for Holyoke is a good and necessary idea.

However, I also believe that in order to move forward we have to know and understand the history of Puerto Rican/Hispanic-building agendas in Holyoke.

Here is a small sample of the many groups, initiatives and reports that have created agendas for Holyoke in the past 30 years to address the state of Latinos. · Asociación de Educadores Hispanos de Massachusetts Inc., mid 90s · In the mid 90s, the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration (PRFAA) opened its Northern New England Regional Office under the direction of José Massó (Regional Director) and Jaime Cotto (director of the Springfield-Holyoke Office). Voter registration campaign Boricua, ¡Inscríbete y Vota! - Que Nada Nos Detenga · The Hispanic Parent Advisory Council, commonly known as the Holyoke Bilingual PAC, to address the Holyoke Public Schools Voluntary Lau Compliance Plan and the Consent Decree ordered by federal court · Statewide Latino Public Policy Conference 2000, ¡Un Llamado a la Acción Política!

Report. Sponsored by the Gastón Institute – UMass Boston · Holyoke Working Coalition for Latino Student Education – Educational Plan 2000

· Statewide Latino Public Policy Conference 2004, Advancing the Latino Agenda: Perspectives from Policymakers and the Community Report. Sponsored by the Gastón Institute – UMass Boston · HOLA –Holyoke Organization for Latino Achievement - at the beginning of 2000s

contents

2 Editorial / Editorial Building a Hispanic Agenda in Holyoke 3 Portada / Front Page Exclusive Interview with Andrés Feliciano, Filmmaker of Paper City* 5 Puerto Rican Professionals and Poor Migrate in Large Numbers 6 Holyoke Public Library receives Grant to collect Latino Family History 7 How Inclusive is the Entertainment Industry?

8 Tinta Caliente / Hot Ink 9 Opinión / Opinion El Deseo Autentico del Amor 10 The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts There is Another Option: Opt Out 11 It’s Too Soon to Discount the Power of the Latino Vote 12 ¿Qué Pasa en...?

14 Libros / Books?

Signs Preceding the End of the World 15 Salud / Health Lo que Debe Saber Acerca del Virus del Zika

· Holyoke Taskforce for Excellence in Latino Education – ¡AVANZA!: Strategic Action Report 2004-2009 · Holyoke Planning Network (HPN) – Community-Based Learning Program, Mount Holyoke College 2004-2005 · Holyoke Unites / Holyoke se Une 2007. An offspring of Enlace de Familias / Holyoke Family Network · The short-lived Puerto Rican / Latino Leadership Council 2011

Let us move forward. Let us learn our history and create an updated Puerto Rico / Latino agenda that addresses unsolved issues in our community. In the wise words of Confucius, “Study the past if you would define the future.”

Cita del Mes/Quote of the Month

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.

Marcus Garvey

Civil Rights Activist (1887–1940)

Veanos@www.issuu.com/elsollatino

Founded in 2004 n Volume 12, No. 5 n March 2016 Editor Manuel Frau Ramos manuelfrau@gmail.com 413-320-3826 Assistant Editor Ingrid Estrany-Frau Managing Editor Diosdado López

Art Director Tennessee Media Design Business Address El Sol Latino P.O Box 572 Amherst, MA 01004-0572

Editorial Policy El Sol Latino acepta colaboraciones tanto en español como en inglés.

Nos comprometemos a examinarlas, pero no necesariamente a publicarlas. Nos reservamos el derecho de editar los textos y hacer correcciones por razones de espacio y/o estilo. Las colaboraciones pueden ser enviadas a nuestra dirección postal o a través de correo electrónico a: info@elsollatino.net.

El Sol Latino welcomes submissions in either English or Spanish.

We consider and review all submissions but reserve the right to not publish them. We reserve the right to edit texts and make corrections for reasons of space and/or style. Submissions may be sent to our postal address or via electronic mail to: info@elsollatino.net.

El Sol Latino is published monthly by Coquí Media Group.

El Sol Latino es publicado mensualmente por Coquí Media Group, P.O Box 572, Amherst, MA 01004-0572.

Portada / Front Page

El Sol Latino March 2016

Exclusive Interview with Andrés Feliciano, Filmmaker of Paper City* The following interview was recently conducted by Mariana Mcdonald with Andrés Feliciano, co-producer and music director of Paper City, an exciting new film about the “American Dream” and the school-to-prison pipeline. A feature-length documentary set in the Puerto Rican community of Holyoke, Massachusetts, Paper City has toured film festivals nationwide and was featured at the International Puerto Rican Heritage Film Festival in 2014 in New York City. Feliciano and co-producer/ director Akil Gibbons have built on their very successful Kickstarter campaign to use Paper City as a vehicle to build a national network of activists, pairing the film with a curriculum for use in communities nationwide. mm: What do you do for work?

AF: I work in film and music production. On the day-to-day, I work as a production assistant and as a background actor on major film and television productions in New Orleans and Atlanta. I am also a film producer and music producer.

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by MARIANA MCDONALD

inhabited by many who were subsistence farmers in the wake of slavery in Puerto Rico under the Spanish.

The Puerto Rican community inherited a deficit, if you will, coming into Holyoke. They inherited abandoned factories, where the corporations had left, in search of either a similar or higher profit margin than what they had had before, because the economy changed—and that’s for a number of reasons. The Puerto Rican community inherited a lack of jobs and a lack of social infrastructure, because the money was not in the community any more—it had come, and it had left. mm: How will Paper City help Puerto Rican communities?

AF: Paper City can help Puerto Rican communities because, for one thing, it very succinctly gives a context and a link to the historical factors that affect Puerto Rican communities in the US today, and the problems that many Puerto Rican communities in the US, especially in urban America, face— and that is critical, because if you don’t know your history, you don’t know your future; and that goes for any peoples. So for Puerto Ricans, where our history is so very important to our identity and our national identity—as a nation—we have an opportunity through Paper City to help young people especially to see the links between what was happening in Puerto Rico in 1898… and what is happening in the US to Puerto Rican communities that emigrated to the US—now.

Film clip from “Paper City”

mm: Are the conditions in Holyoke worse than or representative—in your opinion—of the economic and social conditions faced by the Puerto Rican Diaspora elsewhere?

AF: That’s a good question. It’s hard for me to say, because—as much as I would like to be, I am not an authority on figures within the Diaspora as a whole—and that is something I would like to be more aware of and knowledgeable of. But from my understanding, the conditions and problems that Puerto Ricans face in Holyoke are not dissimilar to problems that are faced by Puerto Ricans in other urban communities—and this is both now, and historically speaking—in communities like the Bronx, in Boston, and Hartford, in Chicago. Other places that are epicenters within the Puerto Rican Diaspora definitely face issues like these where you have housing shortages and even housing discrimination in the history of Holyoke, as well as lack of economic opportunities, lack of job opportunities, high unemployment rates, disparities in education, the War on Drugs, and mass incarceration. mm: How would you say Paper City is relevant to Puerto Rican communities of the Diaspora today?

AF: Paper City shows the links between the history of Puerto Rico and the history of Holyoke, which is the history of the United States—and the current situation in Holyoke, in the United States, and in one Puerto Rican community.

I think Paper City does a very good job of showing the links between say, the 1898 occupation and ground invasion of Puerto Rico by the US Armed Forces and takeover by the US federal government, and the flight of so many Puerto Ricans from the island to the mainland in search of work.

Large tracts of land were bought up by US corporations that were previously

Film clip from “Paper City”

mm: What will you do with Paper City?

AF: Paper City is intended first and foremost to be an educational program for middle school and high school students, so its intended destination is in the schools, the classrooms, the juvenile detention centers, the community centers, the churches, and in the minds of the youth of urban America— and that includes the Puerto Rican community.

Martin Luther King, Jr.—whose final book before he was killed, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, is a fantastic analysis of the future of America at the tail-end of the Civil Rights movement and the beginnings of the Vietnam War. He saw these things happening, and he saw that there were links between them—and in this book, which we studied as a text upon which Paper City’s ethos was founded, these problems are happening still today—and we have not solved them. And so this is part of a continuum. mm: How will Paper City’s messages and its use in the schools help build alliances between Puerto Rican communities and other communities facing mass incarceration, detention, police brutality, and the War on Drugs? continued on next page

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El Sol Latino March 2016

Exclusive Interview with Andrés Feliciano, Filmmaker of Paper City* AF: Right now, we are launching Paper City as a free public educational resource online—both the film and the curriculum—that is an open-source curriculum upon which people can provide feedback, develop, evolve, and reuse over time to better suit the needs of our communities that are suffering from these problems.

Paper City intends to build a movement—nationally—of educators, concerned individuals, young people and organizations who are fighting on the front lines of these issues of drug policy, mass incarceration, criminal justice, economic justice and education reform, and educational change.

We can create an online community of educators and concerned people and young people who are fighting to stop the school to prison pipeline— and can connect communities like Ferguson that are affected by an unjust police regime that lacks accountability and representation, as well as Puerto Rican communities that are facing high dropout rates like in Holyoke, where you have a 60% dropout rate and over 40% Puerto Rican population. mm: Will Paper City and its curriculum and website be available in Spanish?

AF: Yes. We’re working on that right now. The film will soon have Spanish subtitles. The curriculum will also soon be presented in Spanish language format. And this is critical again because of the links between, say for example, incarceration of Black and Puerto Rican populations in urban America who are very heavily affected by drugs, drug dealing, and the War on Drugs—as well as the detention regime that affects immigrants in this country in the matter of hundreds of thousands a year—mostly from Central and South America and México, but also from other countries as well.

There’s a link between these two things where the law—and the enforcement of the law, and the lack of accountability presented by the general public—is creating a problem in which our peoples’ bodies are being siphoned into a system where they have no freedom, their freedom is restricted, their rights are restricted, and people are making money off of it.

(continued from previous page)

from as a Puerto Rican—whether your family is from Loíza, from Mayagüez, Ponce, San Juan, or Bridgeport—you are valid, and your experience is valid.

And this also goes for our intersecting identities in gender, queerness, transgender folks, no matter what your identity is, you are valid, you know?

Because—can we talk about the fact that a young queer teenage activist was killed and decapitated in Puerto Rico a few years ago, and their body was found on the side of the road? Can we talk about that? Because that’s part of it, too. Because we also have challenges within our own communities through things like machismo that we still have to address and still have to deal with, right—and racism and colorism, which are present both on the island and in the states, right—and we need to deal with those things in order for that to happen.

You’ve got to stay strong on your identity, because people profit from you losing that. People profit from us being in prison, people profit from us shooting and killing each other, people profit from us hating ourselves, and not believing in ourselves, and giving into fear, and not taking chances that are valuable, and taking chances that aren’t valuable. People profit from that.

And we cannot allow that to continue. So to the young people: don’t ever let anyone tell you that you are not who you believe you are and who you want to be. Because no one is ever who they “want to be” at that very moment.

It’s an act of the future that you are validating and affirming in the present. *Interview published originally in La Respuesta Magazine on January 15, 2016

mm: What has it been like for you—as a Puerto Rican musician and filmmaker—to work on Paper City?

AF: It’s been incredibly rewarding. This is what I consider, if there ever were one, a career case—this is a life project. Being able to participate in this, this being something that can help my community as a Puerto Rican, that can help my people as a Puerto Rican, is incredibly honoring and rewarding—especially given the fact that we are treading new ground, and pioneering a territory in which you can use film and music and the arts in combination with education and social justice to actually bring about change through empowerment of the youth. So that is a huge honor for me, both as a Puerto Rican but also as a human being, as an American, as whatever categories I may fall under or put myself in. I believe that this is something that is more important than anything else I’m doing—and that is a blessing, really—as a Puerto Rican, to see Holyoke and to have interacted with it.

(Photo supplied) Andrés Feliciano, Coproducer and music director of Paper City

PROGRAM / PROGRAMA HISPANIC FAMILY FESTIVAL 2016 / FESTIVAL DE LA FAMILIA HISPANA 2016 SPRINGDALE PARK @ 844 MAIN STREET, HOLYOKE, MA “Pueblo…Nuestro Futuro Está En La Educación” Thursday, July 14, 2016 / Jueves 14 de Julio del 2016.

–Pentecostal/Christian Night 4pm – 10pm Friday, July 15, 2016 / Viernes 15 de Julio del 2016.

-5:30pm – 7:00pm - Jose Gonzalez y su Banda Criolla -7:30pm – 9:00pm - Luis Rene Robles

“El Sonero Féliz”

y la Orquesta Yunqueña

-9:30pm – 11:00pm – Bachata Heightz Saturday, July 16, 2016 / Sabado 16 de Julio del 2016.

-2:00pm – 2:30pm - Grupo el Coqui -2:30pm – 3:10pm - Grupo Amapolas -3:30pm – 5:00pm - Miguel Gonzalez y Así Canta la Montaña -5:30pm – 7:00pm - Verónica Robles y su Mariachi

mm: What advice would you give to aspiring young Puerto Rican filmmakers, musicians, and/ or community activists?

-7:30pm – 9:00pm - YeraSon Orchestra

AF: Your experience, first of all, is valid. You are valid, your experience is valid. Don’t let the only images you may see of Puerto Ricans represented in films and TV dictate your validity and existence—“I am only valid if I fit those things”—No. No matter whether you are white, black, “mixed”, Puerto Rican, no matter how you look as a Puerto Rican, no matter where you come

-4:00pm – 5:30pm - Frankie Rodriguez y su Orquesta Homenaje

-9:30pm –11:00pm – Alex Bueno y su Orquesta Sunday, July 17, 2016 / Domingo 17 de Julio del 2016.

-1:00pm – 2:00pm – Contrabanda Orchestra -2:30pm – 4:00pm - Los Gigantes de la Plena -5:30pm - 6:15pm – Charlie Berrios -6:30pm – 8:00pm - Orquesta NG2 *Western Massachusetts Hispanic Parade on Sunday, July 17, 2016 @ 11:00am from Pine Street & Resnic Boulevard, Holyoke, MA *Desfile Hispano del Oeste de Massachusetts Domingo 17 de Julio del 2016 @ 11:00am desde la calle Pine & Resnic Boulevard, Holyoke, MA *Music line up subject to change / Programa puede cambiar sin previo aviso

Portada / Front Page

El Sol Latino March 2016

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Puerto Rican Professionals and Poor Migrate in Large Numbers by CENSUS INFORMATION CENTER, UPR-CAYEY CAYEY, PR. February 17, 2016. Census Information Center, UPR-Cayey Since the beginning of the current economic downturn in 2006 to 2014, 609,000 people have migrated from Puerto Rico to the United States. On the other hand, 243,000 have migrated from the United States to Puerto Rico. Therefore, the Census Information Center (CIC) of the University of Puerto Rico in Cayey reported that net migration of Puerto Rico to the United States has been around 366,000 people for the referred period covering nine years. Of these, 15% (56,000) had a baccalaureate or higher degree, which could represent a significant brain drain. Data was obtained from the American Community Survey of Puerto Rico, conducted by the Census Bureau.

“It is important to note that this is not an irreversible situation. Several studies indicate that this pattern is linked to the economic depression so if the economy is reactivated we may see a decrease in the brain drain and even a return migration such as the one that took place in the 70s, “ added Dr. Caraballo Cueto, who also has a doctorate in Economics.

“While it is true that in the migration to the United States there is a proportional representation of all levels of schooling of Puerto Rico, it is also true that in absolute terms decreased stock of human capital has occurred.

However, when it comes to migration it is vital to consider the thousands of people returning from the US to Puerto Rico. It is true that every year professionals come and go but in net terms there are 56,000 less. These most likely studied in Puerto Rico, either in state institutions or in private schools that enjoy tax exemptions; in both cases they are grants made by the government of Puerto Rico and are complemented by federal funds,” said Dr. José Caraballo Cueto, director of the only CIC in Puerto Rico, located in the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research UPR-Cayey.

“You can feel how migration has served as a safety valve for both the unemployed and for poor people. However, contrary to the vast majority of Latin American countries, Puerto Rico does not receive a significant amount of remittances from the migrants so the short-term benefits of this migration is to alleviate the socio-economic tensions in the country,” said the CIC director.

13% of professional migrants from Puerto Rico to the United States were unemployed during the period 2005-2009, a rate that rose to 17% between 2010 and 2014. And is, in fact, during the period 2010-2014 when the net migration of professionals increased on average by 16% (1,500 more professionals) over the period 2005-2009.

However, not everyone who migrates to the United States is a professional with a bachelor’s or higher degree. In fact, since the economic downturn began in Puerto Rico, a total of 246,000 poor people have migrated to the United States. According to the CIC, if these 246,000 poor people had not migrated, the poverty rate for Puerto Rico would amount to 50% for the year 2014 rather than the 46% recorded.

According to the Census Bureau, a person who lives alone is poor if their monthly income is $1,006 or less. This amount is adjusted if there are more people in the house. The CIC is attached to the Census Bureau and the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research, whose aim is to disseminate data from economic and population census to the communities. They also conduct research for private and public organizations. For more information, please call (787) 738-2161 extension 2615 and 2616 and jose.caraballo8@ upr.edu.

Translated by El Sol Latino

Foto del Mes/Photo of the Month

First Holyoke Latinx Leadership Breakfast Series

Some of the participants of the First Holyoke Latinx Leadership Breakfast held February 24 at Enlace de Familias. The event was organized by Nelson Román and sponsored by Enlace de Familias, South Holyoke Neighborhood Association, MD Beauty Salon, Salsarengue Restaurant, Fiesta Café and El Sol Latino. The Host Committee was State Representative Aaron Vega, City Councilors Gladys Lebrón-Martínez, Jossie Valentín and Nelson R. Román, and Irene Feliciano-Sims and Mildred Lefebvre, School Committee Members.

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Portada / Front Page

El Sol Latino March 2016

Holyoke Public Library receives Grant to collect Latino Family History HOLYOKE, MA. February 23, 2016. Holyoke Public Library - The Holyoke History Room and Archives of the Holyoke Public Library has received a $12,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund “Nuestros Senderos: Las Historias de Nuestras Vidas en Holyoke / Our Paths: Stories of Life in Holyoke.” The project is aimed at celebrating Holyoke’s Latino history and strengthening its place in the History Room’s local history collection. It will include an extensive outreach program and three public events between July 2016 and June 2017.

The grant is one of only three Common Heritage grants awarded in Massachusetts and thirty-eight nationwide. The program was created to preserve and make available “historical records and artifacts currently hidden in family attics and basements” and “to celebrate and expand knowledge of [each] community’s past and the diverse histories of its members.”

The core of the project will be two public “digitization days” or “scanning days,” that will take place at neighborhood locations in Holyoke. At these events, members of the public will be able to bring a selection of their own family history materials--photographs, letters, mementos, photo album pages, etc.—to be digitally scanned at no cost. Participants are free to keep their originals and will receive a digital copy, while another digital copy will go into the History Room’s collections for research use by the public. The

History Room is also reaching out to community organizations who may want to have key historical materials in their possession scanned.

After these scanning events, the Library will host a public event highlighting some of the family histories gathered in the previous year. Participants in the digitization days will have a chance to tell their own stories by collaborating on a display of their family’s history. Scholars of Latino and Puerto Rican culture will place those stories in broader historical context.

Director of the project, Holyoke Public Library Archivist Eileen Crosby, notes that much of city’s history over the last 30-50 years can be told through the experiences of families and individuals. “But in the case of Holyoke’s Hispanic residents, little of this experience has been collected or preserved.

Future generations will know their own family stories, but if these are not collected, much of the larger story will be lost.” The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College (CENTRO), with whom the Library has an ongoing collaborative relationship, will offer expertise, advice, and scholarly support for the project. Manuel Frau-Ramos, publisher and editor of El Sol Latino, founder of the Puerto Rican Cultural Project, and Library Board member, foresees the project as “an outstanding example of what can be accomplished through the partnership between CENTRO and the Holyoke Public Library.”

Individuals and organizations with an interest in the project or questions are encouraged to contact Holyoke History Room Archivist Eileen Crosby at (413) 420-8107.

El Sol Latino March 2016

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How Inclusive is the Entertainment Industry?

LOS ANGELES, CA., February. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire - Ahead of entertainment’s most exclusive and glamorous night of the year, a new study demonstrates just how exclusive film and television can be when it comes to women, people of color and the LGBT community. The results reveal that the prequel to #OscarsSoWhite is #HollywoodSoWhite.

The Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity (CARD) is the first of its kind — an exhaustive analysis and ranking of film, television and digital streaming services that catalogues speaking characters, people behind the camera, CEOs and executives.

Authored by Professor Stacy L. Smith and released by the Media, Diversity & Social Change (MDSC) Initiative at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the analysis found that only 28.3% of all speaking characters across 414 films, television and digital episodes in 201415 were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. This is 9.6% below the U.S. population norm of 37.9%. One-third (33.5%) of speaking characters were female. Behind the camera, a mere 15.2% of all directors and 28.9% of writers across film and every episode of television and digital series were female. Less than one-quarter (22.6%) of series creators were women across broadcast, cable and streaming content.

“This is no mere diversity problem. This is an inclusion crisis,” said Professor Smith, Founding Director of the MDSC Initiative. “Over half of the content we examined features no Asian or Asian-American characters, and over 20% featured no African-American characters. It is clear that the ecosystem of entertainment is exclusionary.”

The report examined 109 films released by major studios and their art-house divisions in 2014. Additionally, 305 television and digital series across 31 networks and streaming services were analyzed. Professor Smith and her team evaluated over 11,000 speaking characters for gender, racial and ethnic representation, and LGBT status. Additionally, in excess of 10,000 directors, writers, and show creators, along with more than 1,500 executives at the different media companies studied were evaluated based on gender.

“This is a landmark study,” Smith said. “No one has looked from CEO to every speaking character across film, television, and digital content. The results speak to the landscape of media and the erasure of different groups on screen and behind the camera.”

None of the six film distributors examined received a passing grade on the Inclusion Index. Of the 30 tests conducted, 24 or 80% yielded a Not Inclusive ranking. On a standard academic scale where 100% equals a perfect score, no film distributor earned a final inclusion grade above 25% across all tests.

“A finding from our other studies regarding women in film is true of executive ranks as well. When power or influence increases, the percentage of females decreases,” said Katherine Pieper, USC Annenberg research scientist and one of the study’s authors.

Key Findings Females are Underrepresented On Screen Across the Entertainment Ecosystem • Female characters fill only 28.7% of all speaking roles in film.

• For scripted series, less than 40% of all speaking characters were girls and women (broadcast=36.4%, cable=37.3%, streaming=38.1%).

• Only 18% of stories evaluated were gender balanced, with film (8%) the least likely to depict balance and cable the most likely (23%).

• A full 42% of series regulars were girls/women. Streaming featured the most females in the principal cast (44.2%), followed by broadcast (41.6%) and cable (41%).

• Females were more likely than males to be shown in sexy attire (Females=34.3% vs. Males=7.6%), with some nudity (Females=33.4% vs.

Males=10.8%) and physically attractive (Females=11.6% vs. Males=3.5%).

Females Face Erasure Behind the Camera, Particularly in Film • A total of 4,284 directors were assessed for gender across all episodes of 305 scripted series and 109 motion pictures. A full 84.8% of directors were male and 15.2% were female.

• Only 3.4% of all film directors were female. Among, TV and digital series, broadcast had the highest percentage of directors (17.1%) and streaming the lowest (11.8%). 15.1% of directors were female across cable shows.

• Across 6,421 writers, a full 71.1% were male and 28.9% were female.

• A total of 487 creators were credited across the sample of TV/digital offerings. Almost a quarter of these creators were women (22.6%) and 77.4% were men. Of these show creators, 22% were female on the broadcast networks, 22.3% on cable channels, and 25% on streaming series.

• Across the 10 companies evaluated, women represent roughly 20% of corporate boards, chief executives, and executive management teams.

• As power increases, female presence decreases. In film, television, and streaming executive ranks, 46.7% of Senior Vice President-level executives are female. In television, near gender parity has been reached at the Executive Vice President tier.

Racial/Ethnic Groups Still Face Invisibility in the Entertainment Ecology • 28.3% of all speaking characters were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, which is below (-9.6%) the proportion in the U.S. population (37.9%).

• Only 22 stories depicted proportional representation with U.S. population on the broadcast networks (19%), 18 on cable (13%), 1 on streaming (2%), and 8 in film (7%).

• At least half or more (52%) of all cinematic, television, or streaming stories fail to portray one speaking or named Asian or Asian American on screen.

And, 22% of shows and movies evaluated fail to depict on screen one Black or African American speaking character.

• Out of the 407 directors evaluated, 87% were White and 13% were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. Only two of the 53 underrepresented directors in film and television/digital series were Black women.

• Cable shows (16.8% of directors) tended to attach an underrepresented director to their season premiere episodes more than broadcast (9.6% of directors) or streaming (11.4% of directors) shows. Film held an intermediate position across media, with 12.7% of all directors across 109 motion pictures from underrepresented groups.

• The percentage of on screen underrepresented characters increases 17.5% when an underrepresented director is at the helm of a scripted episode or film. Only 26.2% of characters were underrepresented when directors were White whereas 43.7% were underrepresented when directors were from racial/ethnic minority groups.

Equity in Portrayals is Not Existent for the LGBT Community • 2% of all speaking characters across the 414 movies, television shows, and digital series evaluated were coded LGB. • Only seven transgender characters appeared across 414 stories evaluated.

• Almost a third (31.4%,) of the 229 LGBT characters appeared in cable shows, 28.8% in film, 24% in broadcast, and 15.7% in streaming. Over half (58%) of the portrayals in movies were accounted for by two films.

• Of all LGBT characters, nearly three quarters (72.1%) were male and 27.9% were female. The vast majority of LGBT characters were White (78.9%) and only 21.1% were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups.

SOURCE: USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

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El Sol Latino March 2016

OT TINTNAT E H INK CAr MLanIueEl Frau Ramos Po

Holyoke... Key members of the of the past HPS administration resign.

Carol Hepworth, Director of Special Education, and Assistant Superintendent Paul Hyry-Dermith formally submitted letters of resignation in the middle of February. These resignations appear to be related to the fact that the new District Receiver for the schools had indicated he was looking to have a “leaner central office staff.”

Holyoke…Miembros claves de la pasada administración de HPS presentan sus renuncias.

Carol Hepworth, Directora de Educación de Especial, y el ViceSuperintendente Paul Hyry-Dermith, formalmente presentaron cartas de renuncia a mediados de febrero. Estas renuncias parecen estar relacionadas con el hecho de que el District Receiver había indicado que estaba buscando tener una oficina central con menos personal.

Estos dos educadores con décadas de experiencia ocuparon posiciones claves en la pasada administración del ex-Superintendente Dr. Páez.

These two educators with combined decades of experience held key positions in the past administration of former Superintendent Dr. Páez.

El Sol Latino May 2014 9 1/8 x 5 3/8

Your community radio station, broadcasting 24/7 from the campus of Springfield Technical Community College

www.wtccfm.org WTCC is your source for music - from salsa to R&R oldies, gospel to jazz, R&B to bluegrass, Motown and more, as well as Ecos del Ritmo, Cantares Latino-Americanos, and Club House Dance Music plus local talk shows with local hosts discussing local issues.

Opinión / Opinion

El Sol Latino March 2016

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Political thinking on the poor: The elephant in the room by WALTER MULLIN, Ph.D. and MIGUEL ARCE Every four years, as candidates launch their campaigns for the office of President of the United States, there is the possibility that there will be a meaningful understanding about the lives of people who live in poverty. In 2014, the United States Census Bureau estimated that 14.8% (46.7 million) Americans lived in poverty. Life in poverty is complex. Clearly, new programs and policies have the power to improve the lives of people in poverty. It is paramount that politicians accurately understand the needs of all poor people. In the recent State of the Union speech, President Obama challenged politicians with the words “If you truly believe you could work full-time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, try it. Then see if you like it.” During this election year, it is essential to pay attention to the words of political figures, regardless of party affiliation, and reflect on the ways these words demonstrate knowledge about life in poverty.

It appears that much of the recent political discourse does not include a significant focus on how to help people who live in poverty. Instead, politicians appear to have traded that for speaking about life in the middle class. Nevertheless, there have been times when the candidates have spoken about this by addressing two connected questions and then making proposals to “remedy the problem”. The two questions are: what causes someone to be poor and what are the political solutions to help people escape from it.

Frequently, political comments about the causes of poverty are full of negative attributions about those who are poor. One presidential candidate recently framed poverty as a choice, brought on by bad decisions and unwillingness to do the things a non-poor person would do to prevent it. In this way of thinking, it might be understood that the poor person chooses not to be educated, decides to marry too early in life, and lacks the motivation to work. Furthermore, continuing with this line of thought, this person has become “dependent” on government programs which he or she refuses to give up. For those who think this way, the phrase “safety net” has been changed to the word “hammock” to reflect an attraction to stay poor.

It is not unusual for political figures to characterize peoples’ move out of poverty as a result of personal attributes. Regularly, politicians reveal that they had been raised in poverty. They often speak proudly about their journey towards financial independence and wealth. They emphasize strong values like hard work, discipline and self-control. These politicians deserve credit for their own achievements and their family’s successes.

While they actually do offer a model for escape from poverty, a model supported by social advocates, they miss the overwhelming challenges and lack of resources that allow people to get there. Clearly people are not poor because they are not able to rise above their challenges or because they lack ambition or are lazy. Millions of children are growing up poor not because they bring it on themselves. Importantly, the problem of poverty needs to be understood as a structural problem. There is no ladder out of poverty. Poverty happens despite the best efforts of families. It is not brought on for lack of effort. It is not a matter of character. Poverty is misportrayed.

There are different political opinions on the way to solve the problem of poverty. One is to make policies and design programs that directly intervene with it. The other is to change tax structures so the economy creates jobs for all people; not solely for people living in poverty. Some politicians are calling for trillions of dollars of tax reductions for businesses as a way to solve the problem. Sharp cuts in non-defense programs—estimated at over $5 trillion by the Center on Budget and Policy Priories—are being called for by conservatives. Tax cuts and budget plans proposed by candidates running for the presidential nomination would cut basic assistance deeply for poor families. The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center has relieved that one candidate would reduce revenues by $9.5 trillion over its first decade.

His plan heavily favors upper income households. Tax cuts and budget priorities inescapably increase poverty and hardship.

Another solution that was discussed at a recent forum in South Carolina emphasized that offering block grants to states could solve poverty by relying on the private market and deemphasizing the role of government. Instead of a national policy, individual states would be given authority. These mega block grants would likely shift funds away from direct assistance to needy families and carry substantial risk of increasing poverty instead of reducing it. For example, these proposals would jeopardize basic nutrition assistance for poor children. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a federal program, has demonstrated that when children have access to food they are more likely to complete high school and, as adults, have greater earning potential. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, SNAP keeps 10 million people out of poverty. Today’s safety net keeps millions of Americans out of poverty and has a positive long term impact on children.

There is an elephant in the room. The obvious truth about life in poverty is being ignored or going unaddressed--children and families are struggling; their are going hungry. The obvious solution must lead to structural answers.

It is not an issue of character.

Walter Mullin, PhD (wmullin@springfieldcollege.edu) is a Professor at the School of Social Work at Springfield College. Miguel Arce MSW (marce@ springfieldcollege.edu) is an Associate Professor at the School of Social work at Springfield College.

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The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts por ANDREW MOREHOUSE

El hambre es una epidemia de nuestro tiempo siendo solamente un síntoma de la pobreza en nuestro país. Cada año, aumenta la asistencia de alimentos para ayudar a nuestros vecinos quienes la necesitan. En el último año, The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, distribuyó casi 10 millones de libras de alimentos – el equivalente a 8.2 millones de comidas – el mayor número en nuestra historia de 34 años. Como el principal almacén al por mayor regional de alimentos de emergencia, The Food Bank distribuye alimentos saludables directamente a aquellas personas quienes los necesitan, así como también a más de doscientos programas de ayuda alimentaria independientes y sin fines de lucro. Esta cifra incluye muchas organizaciones religiosas. Estos programas se ubican en los pueblos y las ciudades de los cuatro cantones de nuestra región – Hampden, Hampshire, Franklin y Berkshire.

Está claro para nosotros en The Food Bank que la asistencia de alimentos exclusivamente no acabará con el hambre. El hambre es un desafío para toda la sociedad el cual sólo puede ser resuelto si y cuando todos cumplamos con el compromiso de acabarla – las organizaciones sin fines de lucro, las organizaciones religiosas al igual que los negocios privados y el gobierno local, estatal y federal. Aplacar el hambre requiere tanto el imperativo moral como el deseo político de superar las posiciones y los valores ideológicos restringidos.

There is Another Option: Opt Out

by LISSA PIERCE BONIFAZ

It’s that time of year again. The tension is rising in our public schools as teachers prepare students for another round of standardized testing that will begin March 28th and end by April 12th, 2016. This year students will be given even more testing than previously required. The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System(MCAS) will add items the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). The decision to use both tests was announced by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education(DESE) on January 8th -hardly two months before they are to be administered.

Yet, DESE is giving teachers little notice or extra time to review this “newer” version of the test which differs significantly from the previous assessment.

One of the most obvious differences between MCAS and PARCC is that students will be “time-tested” on their writing prompts. This means students will have limits on the time they can spend on the writing tasks of the English Language Arts (ELA) test. Timing students exacerbates their stress level and diminishes their ability to concentrate. Writing prompts are rarely used in today’s classrooms with time constraints. Yet, because of PARCC’s requirement for timed tests, teachers will need to work with their students on how to manage their time wisely, keep calm and stay focused.

I am an educator and a parent who witnesses daily the consequences standardized tests are having on our children, their curriculum and their

El Sol Latino March 2016

Nosotros no creemos que haya una solución milagrosa. Acabar con el hambre también requerirá un ataque desde múltiples frentes, incluyendo (pero no limitado a) la creación del empleo y el desarrollo de la fuerza laboral, el ingreso familiar estancado, la desigualdad de los ingresos, la falta de vivienda económica, la educación, el cuidado de niños, el mejoramiento del transporte y la salud pública. Requerirá un cambio sistémico sostenible a largo plazo para que todos tengamos el acceso a comida saludable.

En enero, The Food Bank, dió un gran paso hacia el cambio verdadero al iniciar un Comité para acabar el hambre. Concebido como parte del plan estratégico del Food Bank, este Comité reúne a un grupo de 26 líderes comprometidos de los cuatros cantones del oeste de Massachusetts. Estos individuos representan a varios sectores de la comunidad: programas de asistencia de alimentos, líderes políticos, empresarios, profesionales de la educación, expertos en la salud y líderes religiosos. Ellos ya han iniciado la discusión seria sobre el hambre, sus causas y las posibles soluciones.

En el transcurso de este año, el Comité se reunirá regularmente para desarrollar un plan de acción audaz pero a la vez pragmático para erradicar el hambre en nuestra región. Con el potencial de energía y recursos de las organizaciones comprometidas, los negocios y los miembros de la comunidad, el Comité comenzará a generar ideas y recomendaciones que servirán como un mapa para realizar un cambio real. Reconocemos que esta es una meta loable y ambiciosa, y que probablemente tome más tiempo del que quisiéramos. A pesar de esto, creemos que no podemos ser leales a nuestra misión y pragmáticos en llevarla a cabo a menos que nos hagamos responsables con el compromiso y la participación de la comunidad.

El Comité también presentará una serie de foros comunitarios (uno en cada uno de los cantones del oeste de Massachusetts) durante el transcurso del año. Estos foros proporcionarán una oportunidad para que todos puedan seguir el progreso del Comité y compartan sus opiniones y recomendaciones. Se anunciarán pronto las fechas y los lugares de los foros. Visite nuestra página en la red (foodbankwma.org/special-initiatives/) para encontrar las fechas de los foros y así podrá enterarse de los logros del Comité. Regístrese para recibir nuestro boletín electrónico mensual.

También, se puede participar en la conversación a través del medios sociales siguiendo The Food Bank en Facebook y Twitter.

Andrew Morehouse es el Director Ejecutivo de Food Bank of Western Massachusetts localizado en 97 North Hatfield Road, Hartfield. community. As an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher, I have proctored the test for 10th graders and can testify to the cultural and linguistic biases inherent in its design, especially as it pertains to English Language Learners(ELLs) and Students with Special Needs (SPED). And as a concerned parent, I witness the harmful impact these tests have on the school climate as the test dates loom in the near future. At this point in the year, no child I know is coming home telling their families how much they love learning, instead its content cramming, teaching to the test and way too many writing prompts.

Did you know there is another option? While federal law requires assessment, it does not require high stakes standardized testing. To tell your school that your children will not partake in MCAS and PARC could have repercussions for your school “rating” if less than 95% of the students take the high stake tests. Nevertheless, opting out, you can show the state that you believe in the teachers to instruct and evaluate progress. Opting out, you can tell the state you do not want your children tested with a measurement so latent with inherent biases that haunt their curriculum, their desire to learn and their graduation from high school. If standardized testing cannot measure their accomplishments at school, why are we giving this power to the state?

The following websites can provide you with more information about Opting Out: Facebook.com-Mass Opt Out and citizensforpublicschools.org.

Lissa Pierce Bonifaz, has a Ph.D. in Bilingual Education and resides in Amherst.

Opinión / Opinion

El Sol Latino March 2016

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It’s Too Soon to Discount the Power of the Latino Vote by MELISSA R. MICHELSON | January 17, 2016 NiLP Guest Commentary: Debating Latino Political Power The NiLP Report asked a number of Latino opinion leaders across the United States to respond to the issues raised by journalist Roberto Suro in his January 2nd New York Times opinion piece, “Whatever Happened to Latino Political Power?”

In a recent piece for the New York Times, Roberto Suro posits that 2016 “could be the year of the Latino eclipse,” predicting that promises of increased Latino political power may in fact fail to come to pass. Instead, he sees an overall lack of interest or participation by the growing number of eligible Latino voters, a lack of Latino protest in the face of a surge of deportations, and a possibility of a Latino candidate (Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio) drawing a significant proportion of the vote as the GOP presidential nominee.

Is this really where Latino political power is headed - to the dustbin of history, a blip that peaked with the 2006 marches and the elections of Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, and then a rapid fading into impotence?

Not so fast.

As Nate Silver recently noted, most Americans aren’t paying much attention to the campaign quite yet. As Election Day approaches, interest will increase, and a lot can happen between now and November. Yes, Hillary Clinton has only hinted that she might tap Julián Castro to be her running mate; if/when she does, closer to Election Day, the public will be listening.

It’s absurd for Suro to dismiss this possibility as irrelevant to Latino interest in her candidacy when it’s far too early in the cycle for those sorts of announcements. Obama didn’t name Joe Biden as his running mate until late August of 2008-about 10 weeks before the election, when the public was paying attention and it would have maximum impact.

Yes, deportations are front-page news right now. But the fight over Obama’s attempts to protect millions of people from deportation is poised to reemerge just in time for the election as well, with potentially massive impacts on Latino voter turnout. On November 20, 2014, President Obama announced a new set of executive actions on immigration, collectively called the Immigration Accountability Executive Action.

These new proposals sought to extend the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) from two to three years and to apply to a larger group of people, and to add Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), to extend deportation relief to undocumented parents of citizens and legal residents. Overall, these changes were expected to grant deportation relief to 3.71 million undocumented immigrant parents, and to add 290,000 newly eligible individuals to the DACA program.

Opponents in 26 states, led by Texas, filed suit against the new programs, claiming that they would cause harm to their states through costs for law enforcement, health care, education, and driver’s license processing. The case looks to be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, with a decision likely announced in June 2016, just in time for the summer surge of interest in the election. If Obama wins that fight, or even if he loses, Latino support for the Democratic Party-and interest in turning out to vote to keep that party in power-is likely to surge dramatically.

Several observers, including Suro, have noted the likelihood that Cruz or Rubio may be the GOP nominee, and how this might cause Latinos to vote for the Republican Party. This overstates the degree to which Latino vote choice is affected by their ethnic identity. Recent research shows that Latinos will vote against a co-ethnic if they disagree with the Latino candidate’s politics; most Latinos today prefer the Democratic Party, and Democratic Party policies. They’re not going to switch ideologies and issue positions just because there’s a Latino heading the GOP ticket. At the same time, a Castro as a running mate on the Democratic ticket would increase Latino turnout and support.

Latinos are not a monolithic bloc. They often come together to emphasize their size and power, but most Latinos in the U.S. are of Mexican descent, while both Cruz and Rubio are Cuban-Americans. And, yes, that matters.

Cuban refugees have enjoyed privileges that Mexican immigrants can only dream of, including protection from deportation and generous government services. Traditionally, Cuban-Americans have preferred the GOP by a 2-1 margin, while Mexican Americans and Puerto Rican Americans have preferred the Democratic Party to a similar degree.

A dozen years ago, George W. Bush won 40 percent of the Latino vote, but the GOP has (as Suro notes) since taken an increasingly hard line on immigration, and Latino voters have noticed. Mitt Romney won just 23% of the Latino vote, despite the failure of the Obama administration to deliver immigration reform (as promised in 2008) and harsh criticism of that failure on an almost daily basis from Univision anchor Jorge Ramos. If Donald Trump is the nominee, his harsh treatment of Ramos during the campaign will surely be remembered. Trump may claim Latinos love him, but polls indicate quite the opposite. Instead, Trump’s nativism is giving a boost to Latino voter registration drives.

It’s true that previous predictions of the power of the Latino vote have often failed to come to pass. But Obama’s reelection in 2012 was fueled in large part by Latino support, and both parties know it. Expect a revisiting of Obama’s 2008 promise of immigration reform, finger-pointing on both sides, and attention to his executive actions, as more of the public, including the Latino public, starts to tune in to the 2016 race. But don’t expect Latino political power to fade in the face of nativist attacks. Latino political power is here to stay, and just getting started.

Melissa R. Michelson is Professor of Political Science at Menlo College in Atherton, California. She has published widely on the topics of voter mobilization and Latino politics, and is co-author of two books, Mobilizing Inclusion: Transforming the Electorate through Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns (2012) and Living the Dream: New Immigration Policies and the Lives of Undocumented Latino Youth (2014). She can be reached at melissa. michelson@menlo.edu. ________________________________________________________________ The NiLP Report on Latino Policy & Politics is an online information service provided by the National Institute for Latino Policy. For further information, visit www.latinopolicy.org. Send comments to editor@latinopolicy.org.

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El Sol Latino March 2016

Holyoke Wistariahurst Museum: March Events Nueva Exposición Celebrando las Abuelas de Holyoke

Asistiendo a Santiago a buscar las historias en la ciudad de Holyoke está María Cartagena, quien es parte de la Junta y Nelson Román.

Jueves a viernes de 3:00pm a 7:00 p.m., sábados de 12:00 p.m. a 4:00 p.m.

Recepción de apertura - sábado 5 de marzo de 2:00p.m. a 5:00 p.m.

Este evento es libre de costo y abierto al público en general

Los que asistan a la apertura podrán conversar con la curadora, con los participantes y con todas las personas que de una manera u otra colaboraron para que esta exhibición se llevara a cabo.

Desde el 5 de marzo hasta el 24 de abril

Exposición de historias y fotografías que capturan las relaciones intergeneracionales en su galería – Nuestras Abuelas de Holyoke: Empoderamiento y Legado/ Our Grandmothers of Holyoke: Empowerment and Legacy.

Esta exposición consiste de fotografias y ensayos en inglés y español que narran las historias de nueve abuelas a través de las remembranzas de sus nietos/as. Estas son historias de mujeres en general y de Latinas en particular. Estos relatos nos revelan, entre otras cosas, los retos enfrentados por las abuelas, el rol de la mujer en la sociedad, y sobre todo el legado que cada nieto/a lleva consigo.

La Curadora de la exhibición, Waleska Santiago, comenta lo siguiente: “Esta exposición me permite combinar el lenguaje universal de la fotografía y el ensayo como herramientas educativas para traer a la comunidad al museo e involucrarlos en conversaciones basadas en testigos históricos reales y experiencias personales, y no en estereotipos o generalizaciones. Es de gran importancia, profesional y personalmente, el poder rescatar y preservar esas historias.”

También podrán disfrutar de refrigerios. Si algunos de los asistentes traen a sus abuelas y desean compartir o grabar sus experiencias podrán usar el equipo de grabación que el museo les proveerá.

Nuestras Abuelas – Our Grandmothers coincide con los esfuerzos del Museo de Wistariahurst en la misión del nuevo museo del siglo veintiuno; empoderando a nuestra comunidad. Proporcionando un espacio para que se den enlaces significativos entre las historias y el arte, y así descubrir, preservar y compartir las memorias de los residentes de Holyoke del pasado al presente. “Podemos aprender muchísimo al escucharnos unos a otros.” dice Kate Preissler, Directora del Wistariahurst. Las historias de esta exhibición serán parte de la colección Historia Latina en Holyoke de Carlos Vega para futura referencia e investigación.

El costo de admisión es de $5.00. Para más información o para ver el itinerario de otros eventos, puede visitar nuestra página web www. wistariahurst.org

Miguel Zenón Visita Holyoke

Holyoke Public Library

El pasado 10 de febrero, el reconocido músico Miguel Zenón ofreció una charla en la Biblioteca Pública de Holyoke sobre lo que significa ser puertorriqueño. Previamente, compartió con el público en Salsarengue Restaurant.

Conversation With the Author: Sonia Nieto

Foto por Eduardo Meléndez. Miguel Zenón en Salsarengue Restaurant

Foto MFR. María Pagán, Directora de la Biblioteca Pública de Holyoke y Manuel Frau Ramos, editor de El Sol Latino, haciendo entrega a Miguel Zenón de un cartel del artista Gaddier Rosario.

Saturday, March 19 - 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM Community Room, Holyoke Public Library

In Brooklyn Dreams, Sonia Nieto—one of the leading authors and teachers in the field of multicultural education—looks back on her formative experiences as a student, activist, and educator, and shows how they reflect and illuminate the themes of her life’s work.

Nieto offers a poignant account of her childhood and the complexities of navigating the boundaries between the rich culture of her working-class Puerto Rican family and the world of school.

Brooklyn Dreams also chronicles her experiences as a fledgling teacher at the first bilingual public school in New York City—in the midst of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville strike—and the heady days of activism during the founding of the bilingual education program at Brooklyn College and later in establishing and running an alternative multicultural school in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Along the way, Nieto reflects on the ideas and individuals who influenced her work, from Jonathan Kozol to Paulo Freire, and talks frankly about the limits of activism, the failures of school reform, and the joys and challenges of working with pre-service and inservice educators to deepen their appreciation of diversity.

Contact: María Pagán, 413-420-8101

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El Sol Latino March 2016

13

Holyoke HCC’s New Center for Hospitality and Culinary Arts

Springfield Yezenia Rodríguez Joins LPV as Social Media Intern

The Economic Development Administration, an agency of the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, has awarded Holyoke Community College and the HCC Foundation $1.55 million to renovate the lower floors of The Cubit building in downtown Holyoke for the school’s new Center for Hospitality and Culinary Arts.

Leadership Pioneer Valley (LPV) announced Yezenia Rodríguez as an intern for the spring 2016 semester. Rodríguez’s primary responsibilities will entail communications and marketing via LPV’s social media platforms.

Rodríguez will be working to expand the outreach of LPV while building a greater online audience.

Once completed, the center will occupy the first and second floors of the historic building at the corner of Appleton and Race streets, near the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center and the city’s new cobblestone Canal Walk and bridge.

“This is an exciting federal grant that will bring economic development and more pedestrian traffic to downtown Holyoke,” U.S. Congressman Richard E. Neal said in advance of a press conference on Friday, Jan. 29. “It will also help continue the renovation and transformation of a historic factory that has been in the city for 95 years. Hospitality and culinary arts are growing fields, and I am pleased that Holyoke Community College is using these resources to locate their new center in the Cubit Building.

This grant, when combined with previously announced state funds and additional resources from the HCC Foundation, will allow for the relocation and expansion of HCC’s Hospitality and Culinary Arts programs to the new facility in Holyoke’s Innovation District.

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U.S. Congressman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) announces a $1.55 million grant for Holyoke Community College’s new Center for Hospitality and Culinary Arts.

The project is expected to be completed by January 2017. The new facility is expected to allow HCC to double the number of students enrolled in the two programs from 60 to 120.

“The money the EDA delivers, which is for renovations, is going to complement the $1.75 million the state is giving us for equipment,” HCC president Bill Messner said last week. “We’ve been very fortunate to get these funds, without which we wouldn’t be able to do this project. Our hope is that a year from now we’ll be moving in and fully operational.”

“I’m very glad this federal grant will help support the expansion of Holyoke Community College’s Hospitality and Culinary Arts programs as they relocate to a new facility in Holyoke’s Innovation District,” said Warren. “HCC does a terrific job giving local students quality training that prepares them for good careers, and this federal funding recognizes the value of that education.”

A senior Communications major and Sociology minor at American International College, Rodríguez is a staff writer for The Yellow Jacket, American International College’s monthly campus newspaper. She is also a member of her school’s chapter of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA). Concurrent to her internship with Leadership Pioneer Valley, Rodríguez is also an employee of the City of Springfield, with the cities’ library system.

Rodríguez is proudly from Springfield.

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Libros / Books

El Sol Latino March 2016

Signs Preceding the End of the World Lisa Dillman’s recent translation beautifully captures the story and spirit of Mexican Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World (Señales que precederán el fin del mundo, 2009).

This slim novel begins dramatically with its heroine Makina exclaiming, “I’m dead” as an enormous sinkhole opens up right in front of her. Her feet pedal backwards as the hole widens, swallowing a man, his car, a dog and “all the oxygen around and even the screams of passers-by.” And then, the “precipice settled into a perfect circle” inches away from her and Makina is saved. But saved for what? What future precipice lies ahead for her?

Makina, the “Village” telephone operator for the “only phone for miles and miles and miles around”, has just set out at her mother Cora’s request to “Go and take this paper to your brother.”

The brother, it turns out, left quite some time ago to cross the border into El Norte, into the Big Chilango, to claim a bit of land supposedly left to their family. Mother and daughter fear that he is lost to them, like so many others, mostly the men of the village, who went to seek riches up North and never came back.

First, Makina stops by the Turkish baths to see one of the town’s three big shots, Mr. Double-U, who promises that when she arrives at the Río separating the two countries, “my man will get you across.” Then she consults another big shot, Mr. Aitch, who smiles, “sinister, with all the artlessness of a snake disguised as a man coiling around your legs.” He agrees to help, saying “All I ask is that you deliver something for me, an itty bitty little thing, you just give it to a compadre and he’ll be the one who tells you how to find your kin.” Having arranged for her crossing and how to find her brother, “now she had to make sure there would be someone to help her back.” Makina visits Mr. Q, owner of the restaurant Casino, who promises, “Once you arrive, there will be people to take care of everything you require.”

Danger and challenges face her along the way; Makina even gets shot.

Finally she finds her brother, or rather someone who looks like him but is so changed that he is a stranger to her. He’s not returning with her. He, who used to be her brother, gives her a hug, and says “Give Cora a kiss from me.” But “He said it the same way he gave her a hug, like it wasn’t his sister he was hugging, like it wasn’t his mother he was sending a kiss to, but just a polite platitude.” Makina felt “Like he was ripping out her heart, like he was cleanly extracting it and placing it in a plastic bag and storing it in the fridge to eat later.”

This short novel is highly thematic even while creating believable characters, characters that the reader cares about; thematic even while developing a plot that snares the reader’s attention, anxious to know “What happens next?” The novel captures the feelings of those who leave what is familiar, what is ‘home,’ to find a new land, a land where they hope things will be better. But that new land changes them.

by YURI HERRERA •Translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman, (March 2015. 128 pages)

While the reader knows the setting is first a small mountainous village somewhere in Mexico, isolated from the modern world, and while the reader knows that Makina is crossing the Rio Grande into the southern border states of the U.S., nevertheless the author is careful to refer to such places with names like “The Little Town” and “The Big Chilango”. This technique underscores the message that Makina and her brother’s experiences are like those of so many crossings that the impoverished, whether of riches, of spirit, or of opportunity, undertake in any part of the world.

And that flight to another land changes people. Makina notes those changes in the people who have “crossed”: “Their gestures and tastes reveal both ancient memory and the wonderment of a new people. And then they speak. They speak an intermediary tongue that Makina instantly warms to because it’s like her: malleable, erasable, permeable; a hinge pivoting between two like but distant souls, and then two more, and then two more, never exactly the same ones…”

The novel opens with “I’m dead.” After experiencing her journey, it well could end “I’m dead”, for the Makina of the opening page is not the same one at the end of the novel.

Very few proper names are given. Characters often seem more symbolic than three- dimensional. Even the brother who is sought is not referred to by name.

Yuri Herrera frequently slips in editorial comments as in this example: When explaining the source of the sinkhole that threatens Makina’s life, he writes, “The Little Town was riddled with bullet holes and tunnels bored by five centuries of voracious silver lust, and from time to time some poor soul accidentally discovered just what a half-assed job they’d done of covering them over.”

Herrera’s novel takes some jabs at the roles men play. He writes of “villages empty of men.” Cora says “who else can I trust it to, a man?” Makina witnesses a gay marriage and thinks that there must be “other marriages, good ones where people don’t split up, where fathers don’t leave and they each keep speaking to the other.”

Even though Herrera is careful not to pinpoint the exact location in which his characters find themselves, he nevertheless masterfully creates setting to underscore theme, plot and tone as in this example: “There was still some light in the sky but it was turning dark, like a giant pool of drying blood.”

After Makina makes it over the border, she sees two mountains “colliding in the back of beyond: like they’d come from who knows where and were headed to anyone’s guess but had come together at that intense point in the nothingness and insisted on crashing noisily against each other…”

Even though the novel is largely serious in tone underscoring the dangers Makina faces, there are humorous touches as when a soldier friend of her brother’s speaks. The friend describes events that have already happened but his verbs are all in the future tense. Makina’s brother explains that “He speaks all one day in past tense, all one day in present, all one day in future, so he can learn his verbs. Today was the future.” And then there is the man who struck it rich and returns to the Mexican village where he was born. He intends to impress the locals with his cellphone but he couldn’t make it work because the ring of mountains surrounding the village blocked reception. The locals were unimpressed.

The novel is a fascinating read that leaves the reader’s mind wrapped in Makina’s story long after turning the final page.

Review by Cathleen C. Robinson, retired teacher of Spanish and Latin American history.

Salud / Health Lo que Debe Saber Acerca del Virus del Zika Las noticias sobre el virus del Zika han hecho explosión a nivel internacional.

Los Centros para el Control y la Prevención de las Enfermedades (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, o CDC) han emitido una alerta de viaje que incluye a más de 25 regiones fuera de los EE.UU., donde el mosquito Aedes aegypti (y posiblemente el mosquito Aedes albopictus) es portador y transmisor del virus. Si bien ambos mosquitos se pueden encontrar en el sur de los Estados Unidos y en otras partes del país, no se habían reportado casos de Zika transmitidos localmente hasta el 2 de febrero, cuando los CDC anunciaron un caso de transmisión sexual del virus del Zika en Texas en una mujer que tuvo relaciones sexuales con un hombre que recientemente había regresado de Venezuela.

El Sol Latino March 2016

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microcefalia, un trastorno en la cual los bebés nacen con cráneos pequeños y subdesarrollados, y otros resultados negativos del embarazo, así como con el síndrome de Guillain-Barre, que se caracteriza por parálisis causada cuando el sistema inmunológico ataca al sistema nervioso.

Si está embarazada y tiene pensado viajar a regiones donde se ha transmitido el virus del Zika, comuníquese con su médico antes de viajar. Si bien no se ha establecido una conexión causal directa entre el virus del Zika y los defectos congénitos y hace falta realizar más investigaciones, el aumento significativo en los casos de microcefalia fue razón suficiente para que los CDC emitieran una alerta de viaje.

¿Qué debe hacer una mujer si estaba embarazada cuando visitó alguna de las áreas infectadas o quedó embarazada poco tiempo después de visitarla?

Las mujeres embarazadas con antecedentes de Los CDC están recomendando que los hombres síntomas preocupantes, como por ejemplo que tengan relaciones sexuales después de viajar fiebre, dolores en los músculos y en las a áreas donde haya un brote usen condones, y articulaciones, sarpullido, dolor de cabeza y que las mujeres embarazadas eviten el contacto conjuntivitis, durante su viaje o dentro de las dos con semen de hombres que recientemente se semanas posteriores al viaje son candidatas para hayan visto expuestos al virus. Se han registrado hacerse el análisis. A las pacientes que viajaron casos aislados de transmisión del virus del Zika a zonas de riesgo, pero no tienen antecedentes por medio de transfusiones de sangre, pero no se de síntomas se les debería ofrecer una serie de ha confirmado ninguno caso de este tipo en el país. ecografías fetales (estudios de ultrasonido) para Los funcionarios de salud del estado de detectar microcefalia o calcificaciones Massachusetts confirmaron un caso del virus el intracraneales. Dependiendo de los resultados, Crédito. Pan American Health Organization.

28 de enero, y dijeron que es posible que haya también se podría recomendar una casos adicionales, si bien el virus no se transmite amniocentesis. Las mujeres embarazadas de una persona infectada a otras personas. deberían comunicarse con su profesional de obstetricia si han viajado El Dr. Andrew Healy, perinatólogo especialista en Medicina Materno-Fetal en recientemente a áreas de riesgo.

Baystate Medical Center, ofrece respuestas a preguntas importantes sobre el virus del Zika. ¿Qué es el virus del Zika y cómo se transmite?

El virus del Zika es una enfermedad transmitida por un mosquito –de la misma familia que el mosquito de la fiebre amarilla, el dengue y los virus del Nilo Occidental– y se transmite por medio de la picadura de un mosquito Aedes aegypti. Si bien en general se cree que no se puede transmitir de una persona a otra, pruebas de algunos estudios pequeños sugieren que las personas infectadas con Zika pueden transmitir el virus a otras personas por medio de relaciones sexuales. Esa creencia ahora se ha documentado en Texas, donde los CDC han confirmado un caso de transmisión de Zika por medio de relaciones sexuales. Si bien la mayoría de las personas (cerca del 80%) no tendrá ningún síntoma, algunos pueden tener fiebre, dolor en los músculos y las articulaciones, sarpullido, dolor de cabeza y conjuntivitis. Los casos graves que terminan en hospitalización o muerte son muy poco comunes. No hay una vacuna o un medicamento para tratar el virus, pero hay investigadores trabajando en ambos temas. ¿Quiénes están en riesgo y quiénes deberían estar preocupados por viajar a las áreas afectadas por el Zika?

Todos corren riesgo de contraer Zika por medio de picaduras de mosquitos al viajar a las áreas de alerta. Sin embargo, en general viajar a las áreas afectadas por el Zika no debería ser causa de preocupación, con una excepción significativa: las mujeres embarazadas o las mujeres que están tratando de quedar embarazadas. El virus ha sido asociado con una aumento alarmante en la cantidad de bebés que nacieron en Brasil con

¿Cómo se puede prevenir la infección por el virus del Zika?

La mejor manera de prevenir la infección por el virus del Zika es evitar ser picado por un mosquito en las áreas afectadas. Debe usar repelente de insectos, sobre todo aquellos que contengan DEET. Además, use ropa que le ofrezca protección, como camisas de manga larga y pantalones, y evite el agua estancada. El mosquito Aedes aegypti se reproduce y descansa en pequeños estanques de agua y en ambientes húmedos alrededor de los hogares, como por ejemplo floreros o recipientes de agua para mascotas. Mantenga las ventanas cerradas y use el aire acondicionado en esas zonas, de ser necesario. La ropa debería ser tratada con permetrina antes de viajar. ¿Qué países están incluidos en la advertencia actual de los CDC? Al 2 de febrero, los países y territorios con transmisión del virus del Zika incluidos en la advertencia de los CDC están en el Caribe: Barbados, Curazao, República Dominicana, Guadalupe, Haití, Martinica, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin y las Islas Vírgenes; en Centroamérica: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua y Panamá; en las Islas del Pacífico: Samoa Americana y Samoa; en Sudamérica: Bolivia, Brasil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana Francesa, Guyana, Paraguay, Surinam y Venezuela; así como Cabo Verde y México.

Para las advertencias de viaje más recientes de los CDC, visite: http:// wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices. Para obtener más información sobre Baystate Medical Center, visite baystatehealth.org/bmc.

Fuente: Baystate Medical Center

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El Sol Latino March 2016

¡Celebrando 40 años de buena música y mucho más! Únase a nosotros para gran arte de todas partes del mundo.

MARZO 2016

THE BACH SUITES | A MOVEABLE FEAST

PILOBOLUS DANCE THEATRE

Matt Haimovitz, Cello Lunes, 7 de marzo a las 7:30 pm | Bowker Auditorium

Martes, 22 de marzo a las 22 at 7:30 pm Fine Arts Center Concert Hall

El aclamado cellista Matt Haimovitz empieza su Moveable Feast el domingo, 6 de marzo, viajando de un extremo al otro de la Ruta 9 para ofrecer 3 presentaciones públicas gratis. Cada suite de Bach está acompañada de un overture, recientemente comisionada por Haimovitz. Las presentaciones culminan la noche siguiente en Bowker, con una presentación de las suites y las overtures restantes.

Con su mezcla de destrezas acrobáticas, ingenio inventivo e imaginería sorprendente, esta compañía que ha sido mundialmente aclamada se transforma en sorprendentes expresiones esculturales que son “inteligentes, entrañables, y físicamente increíbles.” (The Los Angeles Times). Pilobolus Dance Theater vuelve al FAC para un espectáculo de contorsionistas y atrevidas sorpresas.

Domingo, 6 de marzo – Gratis 12 p.m. en el Smith College Art Museum, Northampton Overture de Philip Glass, Bach Suite 1 in G Major 2 p.m. en el National Yiddish Book Center, Amherst Overture de Du Yun, Bach Suite II in d Minor 4 p.m. en Esselon Café, Hadley Gratis, pero favor de comprar una bebida Overture de Roberto Sierra, Bach Suite IV in E-flat Major Sponsored by

Community Partners: Sponsored by

¡Hay Mucho Más!

Visit fineartscenter.com para ver la lista completa de las actividades. Para boletos, llame al 413-545-2511 o al 800-999-UMAS o visite fineartscenter.com (*Precios varían A y B)